Lost For Words: The Dutch Art of Looking Busy While Doing Nothing

Today's Untranslatable Word: Epibreren

Epibreren (v.): To perform unspecified activities that should give the impression of being important, even though they accomplish absolutely nothing.

Pronunciation: eh-pee-BREH-ren Origin: Netherlands Etymology: A deliberate nonsense word that was allegedly invented by civil servants to sound official while meaning nothing at all. The story goes that in 1953, Dutch writer Simon Carmiggelt encountered a government clerk who explained that his documents needed to be “epibrated.” When pressed for clarification, the civil servant reportedly confessed he’d made up the word to buy time while sounding authoritative.

The Rise of Productivity Theater

That Dutch civil servant unknowingly named a phenomenon that has only grown more sophisticated with time. Unlike factory workers whose output can be counted, knowledge workers create ideas and solve problems—work that resists simple measurement. When organizations can’t track meaningful outcomes, they fall back on what they can see: visible activity.

This creates a perverse incentive system. Employees quickly learn that looking busy—scheduling unnecessary check-ins, creating elaborate project timelines for simple tasks, sending “urgent” emails about non-urgent matters—matters more than producing results. Research confirms that 43% of workers now spend over 10 hours per week on such “productivity theater” tasks, while 75% believe this performance is crucial for career advancement.

Organizations have tried to solve this with employee monitoring systems, but these tools often backfire. They create the “mouse shuffle”: employees clicking between applications or using software that fakes activity to satisfy surveillance systems. The deeper problem? Your most productive day might involve thinking for an hour, then typing for 10 minutes. No tracking system can measure the thinking itself.

A Better Way Forward

Productivity expert Cal Newport calls this “pseudo-productivity”—the mistaken belief that visible busyness equals meaningful work. In Slow Productivity, he offers three principles to combat busy work: 1) do less, 2) work at your natural pace, and 3) focus on quality over quantity.

But implementing Newport’s approach requires changing the systems that make productivity theater feel necessary in the first place.

What Organizations Can Do

Measure results, not hours. Instead of tracking time spent, set specific outcome goals like “reduce customer response time from 48 hours to 24 hours.” Ask “What problem did we solve?” rather than “How busy did everyone look?”

Replace surveillance with trust. Stop tracking mouse clicks and keystrokes. Instead, track concrete deliverables: “Marketing campaign launched” rather than employee was “active for 7.3 hours.” Weekly check-ins beat constant digital monitoring.

Eliminate unproductive meetings. Before scheduling any recurring meeting, define its specific purpose. If someone can’t explain what decisions will be made or problems solved, cancel it.

What Individuals Can Do

Focus on impact over visibility. When you have discretion over your work, choose tasks that solve actual problems for your team or customers. Document real accomplishments like “Reduced processing errors by 15%” rather than writing elaborate reports about how busy you’ve been.

Protect your thinking time. Guard blocks of uninterrupted work. Set specific periods for emails and admin tasks instead of responding all day. Your best ideas need space to develop.

Moving Forward

Most employees aren’t engaging in productivity theater with malicious intent—they're responding rationally to systems that reward appearance over achievement. By recognizing this as a structural problem rather than individual laziness, both sides can redirect energy toward work that creates genuine value.